


The Painful Truth

by The_Winter_Writer



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: (kind of but not really) - Freeform, Angst, Betrayal, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Mostly a character exploration during the big reveal in CACW, Multi, POV Tony Stark, Tony Angst, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:00:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Winter_Writer/pseuds/The_Winter_Writer
Summary: It is the worst possible way that Tony could have found out the truth. It's cold, dark and there are dead winter soldiers behind them. He's exhausted, pain medication is muting his injuries and the threat of completely losing the Avengers is still hanging over his head.The fact that days before he had revisited one of his biggest regrets in front of an audience at MIT wasn't helping either.





	The Painful Truth

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically an exploration of Tony's internal turmoil during/after watching the video. I'm not going to rehash the fight.
> 
> I've lost people I dearly love and I've suffered betrayal from a close friend but I can't truly imagine combining those horrible feelings in the way they were for Tony. This is an attempt at getting into Tony's head on what might have been going on as he watched that video and then immediately after. 
> 
> We'll see how badly I fail, won't we?

Grief is an all-consuming thing. It’s not something a suit of armor can fight against. It isn’t something a charming smile or a truck full of money can erase. He can’t toss a sarcastic remark or a sassy quip to stop its silent march. Unfortunately its invasion into his soul, already so battered after years of abuse, is unstoppable.

It sinks its teeth in, burrows deep into his core, and makes a home right in Tony’s very soul which is now writhing, screaming and begging for it to _stop_. Tony is so tired of grief. He’s tired of loss and betrayal. He’s tired of the horrific burden of physical and emotional pain threatening to completely consume him. It is taking its toll on him. He’s weighed down and sleep keeps coming harder and harder.

Tony isn’t quite sure he _wants_ to attempt sleep after _this_. It’s something straight out of a nightmare and he can’t wake up.

He thought this kind of thing should have been long settled. It should have been long buried. Something he had grieved, reluctantly accepted and then moved on from. It’s been decades since this wound was fresh, though days since he dredged that last day up in front of a crowd at MIT, and even then he’d long since thought he had moved on from the grief of the loss that had left him an orphan.

But it isn’t.

It really, really isn’t.

The agony is as fresh. It’s as sharp and cutting as it was the day he’d heard they were gone.

It’s the same kind of violent, aching pain that throbs and pulses and burns wickedly through him without a single care about the person it is breaking to pieces. The images play over and over and over in his head. A horrible nightmarish film that should have never existed but it did.

That night replays in his mind but it’s different now. He knows, he knows intimately, exactly what happened prior to everything crashing down around him. His mind flashes and screams his true last words to his parents, all the things he never said and desperately wishes he had despite everything, especially knowing _how_ they truly lost their lives that cold December night.

_My Mom._

_Oh my God my Mom._

_No. No no no no no no. Not—_

Tony can’t breathe. He can’t _think_. For once in his life everything in his mind has come to a screeching, violent halt and that bright space where his innovation thrives is a dark void of torment. Thought cannot exist in the chaos of emotion and anguish that has taken over his mind.

He wishes he couldn’t feel. It would be easier to hollow himself out, rip out every last emotion that is threatening to drown him, and feel absolutely nothing.

Over and over and over it plays through his mind.

It is seconds that pass.

Mere seconds.

Everything was a lie.

Every single feeling of anger, of hate and echoing sorrow, was wrong and twisted. He had had the wrong information, the anger wasn’t directed where it belonged and Tony wishes for ignorance. Again he wishes he couldn’t feel a single thing.

How was he still standing?

It hurts so much. It hurts too much.

_Mom. Mom, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

He’d trade it for the agony of Afghanistan where he’d woken with a chest full of shrapnel and hands carving a place he would one day fill with an arc reactor. That pain wasn’t this consuming and burning.

His tears won’t come. They burn the backs of his eyes but they won’t come. They won’t fall. Somehow they can’t and Tony feels something hollowing him out. The depth of his emotion is endless as the video plays out and finishes. It’s a dichotomy of feeling.

It’s both pain and nothingness.

Tony is both full and achingly empty.

He can’t even feel the cold of the bunker. He can’t feel anything past grief and the terrible, soul-crushing pain that has settled into his bones. In the back of his mind a horrible, horrible thought starts to take root. A thought he hates so much it almost hurts to breathe through the violence of the emotion it brings with it.

There is still a chance he’s wrong. There is always a chance but it doesn’t stop the thought from filling up the void in his head and threatening to consume him. It digs and twists its way into his mind, poisoning past conversations and the warmth of friendship he’d still had hopes for.

It was that same friendship that had driven him to the bunker, to help them and hope for the very best. To hope there was still a team, still a _family_ , which he could salvage if only this one trip might give him _something_ to work with to start fixing things.

He had just wanted to keep the Avengers together. To keep his cobbled together family safe and whole.

Tony has _always_ done his best to fix and repair and, if need be, rebuild whatever has been broken. The cracks and the breaks and the missing pieces of the Avengers had still been salvageable despite each painful little betrayal.

_Don’t think about Rhodey. Don’t think about him. Fuck fuck fuck._

His mind flashes back to the video.

_My **Mom**. Why? What had she ever done to deserve that? _

Exhaustion, grief, pain and a bone-weary kind of tiredness make him want to give in. They make him want to give up. Everything happened so fast. The wounds hidden by his armor are only distanced by the pain medication he’d taken so he could keep going.

Stark men are made of iron.

But iron bends if someone applies too much heat.

The team is broken, Rhodey is—he can’t even think it, his family has turned on itself, the Raft and Ross’s demand—his horrible threat— has been hanging over Tony’s head like a guillotine waiting to finish him off.

Everything slams into him and the burst of emotion has him moving to the right, fury and pain driving him. Even as Steve stops him, “No Tony. No Tony.” with a firm grip the grief is all-consuming and relentless. Howard… _his Mom_.

Fuck he can still remember the last time he’d drifted off listening to her singing to him softly, her hand brushing his hair and the brush of her kiss on his forehead.

Looking Steve Rogers in the eyes is one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do. To know, to unfortunately know in his heart, the answer to the question he has to ask. Everything in him, all the parts that are not writhing in anguish, hope he’s wrong.

Tony desperately wants to be wrong. He wants that shining, bright beacon of hope he’d looked up to during his childhood and come to regard as a friend to tell him _no_ and for it to be the truth.

He needs it. After the horrors of the past several years he needs something good. Tony needs Steve to say _no_ and mean it. He isn’t sure he can survive another betrayal.

“Did you know?” somehow the words are out there, hanging between them, and Tony is mentally clinging to one last shred of hope.

_Please please please please say no. Say no. Mean it. Please—_

The answer is in Steve’s eyes. It’s written on his face. It radiates from Captain America like a beacon of horror and Tony can’t breathe.

“I didn’t know it was him.”

It tastes like a lie. It feels like a lie.

The betrayal is staggering. It’s horrific. The pain of it almost overwhelms him until the next emotion viciously tears through him without any hope of Tony being able to stop it or take a moment to recover from the truth right in front of him. It’s a painful, unforgiveable truth.

Fury rises up, surging forward, to mix with grief and the painful anguish of betrayal.

“Don’t bullshit me, Rogers.” He can’t bring himself to say _Steve_. Steve is the name of his friend. The name of a man he was so sure he could count on despite everything because every story he’d heard said that Steve Rogers was a good man. All those stories said that he couldn’t possibly keep something like this from anyone let alone a friend. “Did you know?”

Tony forces himself to keep eye contact. He forces himself to see the truth, the undeniable truth, in Steve’s face and his heart seizes. It’s a living nightmare. The rage, the pain, the exhaustion and the whirlwind of emotion that completely consumes him steals his breath.

Stark men are made of iron.

“Yes.”

But iron isn’t vibranium and something inside of him _snaps_.

**Author's Note:**

> Blame YT. Seriously. This is because I, somehow, ended up watching sad/angsty multifandom videos about characters dealing with loss. I'm still not even sure how what I was watching took me down that rabbit hole but it led to me writing this.
> 
> It isn't for a bingo square, it isn't a pairing fic and it's purely focused on one character so I have no idea how this might have come off. I certainly haven't written anything like this before but it was an interesting character exercise and I hope, at least, a few of you might have enjoyed it. 
> 
> Tony constantly breaks my heart and I'd love nothing more than to wrap him up, keep him safe and loved, so nothing bad can happen to him. He's such a real character (delightfully flawed but he learns and grows) and he's unbelievably strong. The fact that he could have easily wiped both of them off of the map (we're all fully aware of the kind of fire power Tony's Iron Man possesses) but didn't, despite the emotional agony he was going through, is insane.
> 
>  
> 
> [My Tumblr](http://the-winter-writer.tumblr.com)


End file.
